Linda Ervine

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Linda Ervine MBE is a language rights activist from East Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is a speaker and supporter of the Irish language and is the project leader of the "Turas" Irish language project which "aims to connect people from Protestant communities to their own history with the Irish language". [1] Turas is operated through the East Belfast Mission of the Methodist Church in Ireland. Ervine has gained some media attention because of her coming from a Protestant Unionist background and supporting an Irish Language Act (a position generally regarded as unconventional).

Contents

Personal life

Ervine comes from a Ulster Protestant background, and she supports Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom; her family held socialist and trade unionist views when she was growing up. [2] She is the sister-in-law of David Ervine, a former member of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force and later the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party. [3] Her husband Brian Ervine also led that party.

Irish language activism

Ervine began her involvement with language issues through a six-week introduction to Irish with the East Belfast Mission (a community development organisation founded in 1985) and Short Strand cross community women’s group. She then joined a beginners class at the cultural centre An Droichead on the Ormeau Road in Belfast. From November 2011 onwards she ran a beginners' class in the Irish language in Newtownards Road [4] which became the Turas Irish-Language Project.

Ervine has often spoken publically on the Protestant history of association with the Gaelic language and the Presbyterian communities of the Hebrides today (given that in Northern Ireland some unionists tend to associate the language exclusively with Irish republicanism).[ citation needed ] She has urged politicians from the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (as well as the Orange Order) not to view the Irish language and culture as exclusively the domain of republicanism. [5] [6] [7]

In December 2014, along with Alasdair Morrison; a member of the Scottish Parliament for 1999-2007, standing for the British Labour Party; she visited Stormont urging "fair treatment and respect for the Irish language." [8] She supported the proposed Irish Language Act for Northern Ireland, saying that unionists have "nothing to fear" from the legislation and non-Irish speakers will not be impacted. [9]

Recognition

In 2020, she became the first president of the newly formed East Belfast GAA. [10]

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Dawn Purvis is a former Unionist politician in Northern Ireland, who was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East from 2007 to 2011. She was previously the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) from 2007 to 2010.

Brian Ervine is a playwright, songwriter and teacher living in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish playwright St John Ervine (1883–1971) was a distant relative. In October 2010 he succeeded Dawn Purvis as the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party. Ervine's wife Linda serves as the Irish Language Officer at Turas, an Irish-language programme notable for its location in east Belfast.

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Ulster Protestants are an ethnoreligious group in the Irish province of Ulster, where they make up about 43.5% of the population. Most Ulster Protestants are descendants of settlers who arrived from Britain in the early 17th century Ulster Plantation. This was the settlement of the Gaelic, Catholic province of Ulster by Scots and English speaking Protestants, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England. Many more Scottish Protestant migrants arrived in Ulster in the late 17th century. Those who came from Scotland were mostly Presbyterians, while those from England were mostly Anglicans. There is also a small Methodist community and the Methodist Church in Ireland dates to John Wesley's visit to Ulster in 1752. Although most Ulster Protestants descend from Lowland Scottish people and English, some also descend from Irish, Welsh and Huguenots.

Turas is an Irish-language project which is part of East Belfast Mission, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Beginning as a grassroots effort, spearheaded primarily by Linda Ervine, Turas aims to promote the language particularly in the Protestant Unionist community. Historically, the Irish language was more closely associated with Irish Catholic identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022</span> Legislation in Northern Ireland

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References

  1. ↑ "TURAS at East Belfast Mission".
  2. ↑ "Linda Ervine: Language and Country belongs to us all". Vixens with Convictions. 26 January 2015.
  3. ↑ "Ervine to open Gaelic centre in Republic". News Letter. 26 January 2015.
  4. ↑ "A New Protestant Beginning for the Irish Language in Belfast". PRI. 26 January 2015.
  5. ↑ "McCausland accused of politicising Irish language". The Irish News. 26 January 2015.
  6. ↑ "UUP councillors 'walk out' on Irish speaker Linda Ervine". BBC. 26 January 2015.
  7. ↑ "Visit our Irish class in loyal east Belfast... challenge to Orange chief who hit out at language". Belfast Telegraph. 26 January 2015.
  8. ↑ "Linda Ervine: "respect the Irish language"". Slugger O'Toole. 26 January 2015.
  9. ↑ Manley, John (22 February 2018). "Irish act in draft agreement did not go far enough, groups say". The Irish News. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  10. ↑ "Linda Ervine named president of in demand cross-community East Belfast GAC". belfasttelegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 27 July 2020.
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